Black out the numbers. So they're actually gone.

Because most black boxes are just a rectangle drawn on top of the text. The characters are still in the file: select-all, copy-paste, or a text extractor pulls your SSN straight out. People have been burned by exactly this in court filings and public records. We do not cover text, we destroy it: the exported pages are flat images, re-rendered from pixels, with your boxes burned in. Then we re-open our own output and count the text objects to prove it. The number shown must be zero, or nothing is offered for download.

Really. Rendering, detection, blacking out and rebuilding are JavaScript running in your browser tab. The only network requests this page makes are to Stripe for payment. Open your browser's developer tools and watch the network tab while you redact. Other redaction sites send your statement to their servers "for AI detection." The whole reason this tool exists is that a document you are redacting is precisely the document that should not travel.

No AI, no cloud. Plain pattern matching running locally: SSN shapes (with structural validity rules), 9-digit runs that pass the ABA routing checksum, 8 to 17 digit account runs, masked numbers like ****1234, US phone formats, emails. Suggestions are a head start, not a guarantee. You accept each one yourself, and reviewing the document remains your responsibility. Scanned PDFs have no text layer to search, so you will be told plainly: draw the boxes manually.

The output PDF is made of images, so text can no longer be selected, searched, or copied by anyone, including you. That is the entire point. It also means the file is somewhat larger than the original and screen readers cannot read it. Page count and page dimensions are preserved exactly, and we print at approximately 150 DPI so it stays crisp on screen and in print.

WEDGEWORKS* PDFREDACT. FileQuiet is made by Wedgeworks. $12, one time, per document. No subscription and nothing recurring. The same file re-unlocks in this browser for free, forever, and the free watermarked sample lets you verify the full result before paying a cent.

We make no legal-compliance claims, and you should distrust tools that do. What we guarantee is technical and testable: the exported file contains zero text objects, the boxed regions are uniformly black pixels, and the document never left your machine. Whether a given redaction satisfies a specific regulation or court rule depends on what you chose to black out. That judgment is yours (or your lawyer's).

No. Drop the same PDF again, redraw your boxes, and the clean download unlocks without another charge. Your payment is remembered by this browser. Because the file never touches our servers, we cannot store it for you. The redaction simply runs again locally. If anything goes sideways, email support@shotfold.com with your Stripe receipt and we will make it right.